It didn’t go so well when Jen’s husband finally found the dirty photos she’d hidden on his computer. He texted her from work: “Thanks for the porn, babe!”

She was mad. In fact, she was so mad that she didn’t delete the text for almost four months, just so she could remind herself how mad she was whenever she thought she was over it. Except she wasn’t clear on what exactly she was mad about.

“Didn’t I deserve more thanks than that?” she fumes. “I spent the whole day. And I got ‘Thanks for the porn’? Like, ‘Thanks for folding my underwear’?”

She waits a second, then amends the thought: “Not that it was a gift. I wanted him to know I saw his porn. Because he looks at porn.”

When she confronted him and he realized the situation had turned into A Situation, he got mad.

“He didn’t talk to me for two days. He was pissed that I searched through his things,” she says. “Honestly, I’m embarrassed that I care about the porn at all. But I care.”

“Women who say they’re cool with it are full of shit,” says my friend Shelly. They have no idea what they’re up against, she claims, and she should know. Every time Shelly turns on her computer, she wonders if this might be it. Will a disturbing icon pop up on her desktop? Will the spyware she and her husband installed pick up a visit to a forbidden site? Because they both know—there are no more second chances.

She’d already watched it play out in her best friend’s marriage. The husband secretly watched porn every chance he could and showed no interest in sex, but was adamant that he never, ever watched porn. Even so, his wife would wake up and find the telltale sign: a pile of balled-up tissues in the office garbage can. She finally divorced him.

The same thing happened with a friend of mine. She was plus-sized, and discovered her husband looking at porn starring rail-thin women. “It made me feel that if I wasn’t a size-two sex kitten, then I wasn’t good for anything,” she says. She confronted him about it, but he simply learned to better cover his tracks. She uncovered them. Now she’s in a relationship with a man she knows looks at porn, and often does with her. She’s okay with that.

Shelly would probably have been fine with that, too. It was the sneaking and the lying—that’s what destroyed her.

“When we’d discuss porn or kind of joke about it, he would act like it was the most disgusting thing,” she says. After seeing a few strange links in their search history, she did some hunting. (He thought he’d deleted his trail.) She took it personally: “I figured he didn’t think my body was sexy, so he had to look elsewhere.” He denied that was true, but why should she believe him? She offered an ultimatum: porn or us. They flew to Colorado for a week-long intensive counseling session with “as seen on Dr. Phil” sex-addict reformer Doug Weiss.

“I feel we have this under control,” Shelly says now. But she still worries, partly for her marriage and partly for her nine-year-old son: “I don’t want him to take this on.”

And that’s when it hits me. Buries me, really.

This grand inquisition over husbands and porn? It seemed so exhilarating when Jen first mentioned it, so fun and porny and harmless. And it can be. But not always. It can get serious. And scary. Because everyone’s lying, to a certain extent. Everyone’s full of a little bit of shit. “I don’t care if my husband watches porn.” La-la-la. “My wife doesn’t have to worry because I would never watch porn.” La-la-la.

We’re the ones living in the fantasy world.

Because online porn? That’s the real world. Over a million sites’ worth of real. If we could go from Playboy in the dresser drawer to this in barely a generation, what will those sites morph into over the next 10, the next 20 years? And guess how the boys my daughters will date will learn what to expect from sex?

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EmmKay

As a girl who used to have 2 male roommates, I agree with the 100%. They would be sad to learn that this habit would make their wives self-conscious about their bodies and have never cheated on any of the girls they dated.

Mary

Ummm….I’m a homemaker, and I watch porn! Even with my husband.

Amanda

This I actually find funny. I too once told myself that I didn’t care that my guy watched porn. But I do. I care a lot. Not because I feel unwanted because believe you me I’m a bit of a sex fiend myself and we have sex nearly everyday sometimes 3 times a day. I will admit that the reason I was so upset was because he was looking at “rail thin” girls. I myself used to be one of those rail thin girls (no I’m not saying I was in porn just that I used to be one of the skinny girls) I’ve looked through his porn. And I’ve only said something because I was having body issues. I said something another time too but only because I found a folder full of naked ex girlfriends. These were time stamped so I know that he didn’t aquire them recently but I let him know that I was not ok with him keeping those. He deleted them and admitted that he had forgotten they were there. I believed this and still do because this hard drive had been in his car which was here and he’d recently gotten home from a 1 year tour in Iraq.

That aside I’ll also admit that I too watch porn on occasion. I get some solo time. And yes he has caught me. Now here is where it gets interesting. He was offended. Why? Because he was in the other room. He thought that if I were in the mood that I should tell him. That he was never too busy for that. I found this very amusing. Because it bothers them just as much as it bothers us. Especially if we do it with out them or without telling them.

fakename

Yes he watches porn..yes we all watch porn.
No matter how hot you are and what how good the sex is….WE WILL WATCH PORN! The End.

Matt

This author is exactly why many men feel the need to hide the fact that they enjoy porn. They are afraid how their partners will react. It’s amazing to me that a woman would be shocked that their man watches porn. He’s been looking at it since puberty, why would he stop now? There have been a million articles written on why men need to understand women better, but the fact of the matter is, most women don’t understand men either. For most men, self pleasuring has nothing to do with their partner. Most men with healthy fulfilling sex lives, still feel the need to masturbate. Don’t get me wrong, communication is key here. If a man wants to watch porn he shouldn’t lie to his partner about it, but I also don’t think he needs to tell her every time he watches a little smut. Just as men need to be in tune to the emotional needs of women, women need to be in tune to the sexual needs of men. My wife knows that I will watch porn by myself. Sometimes, we watch it together. But she doesn’t feel threatened by it. Women who do, show a great deal of insecurity. Often times, I am thinking about my wife while watching porn and it wouldn’t surprise me to know that many men do the same thing. And oh my, GASP, sometimes I think about the woman on the screen. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my wife and think she’s sexy. It just means that I’m a red blooded human being that, GASP again, still finds other woman attractive. Many men are sexual beings as well as many women; It is time we stop kidding ourselves. In the end, if men did a better job communicating their needs and desires instead of trying to hide them or lie about them and women did a better job of understanding those needs and desires, we would have a much healthier society.

Donna Hickman

I’m not impressed with the wife’s decision to reward her husband for being selfish — what would have been a comparable is if she had shared these photos of herself with strange men. i bet her husband would not have tolerated that but insists it’s acceptable for him to get his kicks with photos of strange women. if his wife’s private parts are for his eyes only then his eyes should only be for her intimate parts. Why does everyone accept the propaganda that indulges men only?